ECONOMY

376 social choice
and everything in between. However, the model rests on a handful of heroic assumptions
worth repeating. The three basic components, welfare (R), rights (M i ), and the
set of endstates (X), are three clearly defined and separate entities whose interaction
is limited to two aspects. First, the endstate z only depends on the profile of actions
m via the mapping f , namely the game form. Second, the final welfare level only
depends upon the endstate z, and not directly upon the individual actions.
Conspicuously absent from the model are two important elements of the interaction
of rights and welfare. First, the fact that the nature and extent of my rights affect
my welfare: which game I play, and what role I have in it matters to me. Formally the
whole set M i influences R, not just my particular action m i . Second, I bear some
responsibility in shaping my own welfare because I am free to choose my values
and goals.
The former point inspires the literature on freedom of choice, where the central
question is to extend an ordinary welfare relation comparing single outcomes, to
another welfare relation comparing choice sets (subsets of outcomes) (see Bossert,
Pattanaik, and Xu 1994; Dutta and Sen 1996; Laslier et al. 1998; Pattanaik and Xu 1998,
2000a, 2000b; Sugden1998). The latter point explains the paradox of adaptive preferences:
agents who adapt their expectations to their lot enjoy a higher welfare than
those who do not, and this responsibility should be accounted for when we define fair
endstates. One solution is to introduce additional variables in the microeconomic
formulation, so as to differentiate between those characteristics for which an agent
is responsible, and those for which she is not: Roemer and Fleurbaey initiated this
fruitful line of research (Bossert 1995; Fleurbaey1995a, 1995b; Roemer1993, 1996,
2000;Sen1991).
Another simplifying assumption of the general model is the identification of the
game form G with an allocation of rights. Since Gardenfors (1981), this is an approach
endorsed by many authors (e.g. Gaertner, Pattanaik, and Suzumura 1992). The more
traditional approach insists that a right confers on an individual the ability to fix some
features of the final outcome; that the two approaches are not identical is discussed in
particular by Deb, Pattanaik, and Razzolini (1997).
3 Endstate Justice versus
Procedural Justice
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These shortcomings notwithstanding, the logical separation of welfare and rights
has considerable advantages. By separating ends—the distribution of welfare—from
means—the set of actions and the game form G—we can contrast and combine two
familiar one-sided interpretations of justice: on the one hand endstate justice (e.g.
classical utilitarianism), on the other hand procedural justice, rooted in the liberal
tradition.